Program For Teenage Mothers An Education In Rebuilding Lives

April 06, 1986|By Ann Marie Lipinski.

For two years, Wednesdays for April Scott have meant climbing the stairs to this cinderblock room in Cabrini-Green where the sun streams in in a diamond pattern, filtered through the metal security grates that hang more commonly than curtains on many of the housing project`s windows.

Her son Romell, who is 9 months old, is curled in her lap. He swats at a package of cellophane-wrapped doughnuts, knocking it to the floor. Scott bends over and returns them to the table, a gesture she will repeat unflaggingly as the afternoon wears on. She does not mind. She minds little on Wednesdays. This room is her weekly confessional.

``I always said to myself, `April, you will have four babies by the time you are 30. Two boys and two girls.` Well, I got `em, but I ain`t 30.`` She laughs and squeezes Romell, the youngest of her four children. She is 20 years old.

``I know now I should have waited, but I can`t go back,`` she said.

``They may get on my nerves, but I love them. I may be looking for someone to watch them all the time, but I love them. I`m going to take care of them now, and take care of me.``

For Scott, who with 98 other young Chicago mothers graduated last Friday from an ambitious statewide education program for adolescent parents, the seemingly modest statement of acceptance is a major triumph. She shared her success at a weekly Wednesday meeting of other Cabrini-Green mothers, and recalled that not very long ago she had described herself as ``depressed and embarrassed,`` a child mothering children, a high school dropout, a dependent of her parents` limited resources.

But Scott has recently gotten her own apartment in Cabrini-Green and next month is returning to night school to resume the high school education she abandoned at the age of 15, pregnant with her first child. She wants to be a nurse.

What has made the difference in Scott`s life is her membership in MYM

(MELD`s Young Moms), a creative two-year parenting program that has enrolled 1,500 young mothers in more than 100 community-based agencies across Illinois. The program, based on an 8-year-old model drafted in Minneapolis by the Minnesota Early Learning Design (MELD), a nonprofit family education agency, will graduate several hundred more young mothers in Downstate Illinois in the next month.

The heart of MYM`s strategy has been organizing previously isolated women like Scott in meeting places across the state once a week to teach them self- esteem, child-rearing skills and birth control as well as how to return to school and find employment.

Although more than half of all adolescent mothers fail to finish high school, 80 percent of the girls enrolled in MYM in 13 states have returned to school after dropping out, according to Ann Ellwood, MELD`s executive director. In addition, fewer than 15 percent of MYM`s members become pregnant again within a year of having their first child; nationwide that figure for adolescent mothers is 25 percent.

And though Ellwood estimates the cost of putting a young mother through the 2-year program at $2,000 to 3,000, she said the money is recouped by removing them from welfare rolls, improving the health of their babies and discouraging additional adolescent pregnancies.

``If this program works, it`s because we`ve brought these girls together to give them peer support, and we show them that no one is judging them,``

said Elwood. ``We`re not there to act as their mothers. In fact most of the women who facilitate the groups were adolescent mothers themselves. The girls can see something of themselves in those people. They`re powerful role models.``

Rochelle Satchell is one of those role models, a nearly lifelong resident of Cabrini-Green who leads one of two MYM education groups held in the Near North Side Chicago Housing Authority complex each week. Satchell, who was 19 when she had the first of three children, said she grew up with the parents of most of the young women in her MYM group and is trying to break the legacy passed on by that generation.

``I started my group two years ago with nine girls, only one of whom was in school,`` Satchell recalled recently during a break in her weekly discussion group. ``Now all nine of those girls are either back in school or working, and only one of them has gotten pregnant again.``

Already there are signs that Satchell`s efforts are paying off beyond the boundaries of her discussion group. Yvette Lemon, a 19-year-old mother of one in Satchell`s group, recently persuaded her 13-year-old sister to join a pregnancy prevention group for young teens at Cabrini-Green with hopes that it would keep her from becoming a candidate for MYM.